1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of software and, more particularly, to a software architecture that automatically manages enterprise and provider contact center resources to handle workload on-demand.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many businesses utilize contact centers to market products, to provide customer support, to enact customer reward programs, to manage customer services and accounts, as well as other business related functions. Contact centers can utilize a variety of limited resources when providing workload support. Limited resources can include human agents, self-service system capacity, communication bandwidth, and the like. An over abundance of contact center resources can be an excessive business expense. Running a contact center with insufficient resources, however, can result in excessive customer wait times that can make using the contact center impractical, or at least frustrating, for many customers.
Establishing proper resources within a call center can be exceptionally difficult. Peak contact center times can require an extensive resource infrastructure that is unnecessarily robust to handle workload experienced at non-peak times. Contact centers can also experience seasonal fluctuations and event triggered fluctuations, such as pre and post sales workload variations and/or post holiday workload surges. Further, many contact center functions, like technical support, can require special skills that may be costly to train and/or obtain.
The different workload levels demanded of call centers have resulted in a number of conventional resource allocation methodologies. One such methodology involves outsourcing at least a portion of call center workflow. Outsourced workflow can occur along functional lines, such as outsourcing all technical support and/or sales functionality. Outsourced workflow can also be based upon workflow volume, where supplemental resources are used to handle special situations, like peak workflow times, holiday workflow, seasonal volume, and the like.
A major problem with this approach is that typically the enterprise and the outsourced contact center resources need to be integrated with one another. This can be extremely challenging. For example, supplemental resources can handle the overflow for multiple contact centers, where each contact center can exhibit different contact center, specific behavior. In another challenging situation, data integration between core center computing resources and supplemental resources can be difficult when the supplemental resources utilize different hardware, software, and/or storage models from the core contact center resources.
Another approach to efficiently handling varying workloads is to implement a “seasonal” approach for staffing the contact center and/or a “seasonal” leasing of contact center resources. The seasonal approach is one where the amount of staff and leased resources within the contact center varies according to a business season. The seasonable approach requires analysis, planning, and workload forecasting by an skilled and knowledgeable administrator. Further, problems with employee turnover, training, and short term lease penalties can result: Moreover, the seasonal approach does not ameliorate problems relating to sporadic workload fluctuations.